Talk:Oerth

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[edit] Aerth?

Can someone provide a citation that Jack Vance's world is "Aerth"? All of the Vance books I've read refer to it as "Old Earth" or "The Dying Earth." The implication is very much that this is our own world very, very far in the future. Typing Aerth into Wikipedia gets you a redirect to the Jack Vance page, but I am dubious.

The Aerth with a better Greyhawk pedigree is, of course, the world of Gygax's "Dangerous Journeys" RPG. I would suggest removing the Vance reference (unless a citation can be found) and replacing it with a reference to this Aerth, which very definitely fits within the same "probability axis" as Oerth, as outlined by Gygax in an early Polyhedron article. --Iquander 00:58, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I have no idea on "Aerth" = "Jack vance"--that was long before I got on Wikipedia. I'm down for removing the ref until the truth comes out.--Robbstrd 20:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polyhedron

Is Polyhedron Newszine different from Polyhedron (magazine)? If not, we should remove the word "newszine" from the references section.--Robbstrd 20:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Polyhedron Newszine is actually the name of the magazine. They are more or less interchangable, so I don't have a strong preference on way or the other. --Iquander 23:53, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Since the Polyhedron article is titled "Polyhedron," I just removed "newszine" from the ref, but left it in the text.-Robbstrd 20:46, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Polar Caps

"Oerth has an axial tilt of 30 degrees, which results in larger polar caps and would have caused shorter summers in temperate areas but for wizardly and divine magic shifting weather patterns to be more favorable to the populace (at least the god-fearing folks)."

I'm afraid this statement, which has been in the article for a long time, is just plain wrong. A world with larger axial tilt (technically known as 'obliquity') would have smaller ice caps and be less likely to suffer from ice ages, not the other way round.

The reason for this is that planetary surfaces, particularly those covered (at least partially) with seas, heat up faster than they cool down; oceans in particular retaining a lot of energy. We should expect Oerth to be a lot warmer than it is, but for the old divine magic...

Conversely, a planet with a smaller obliquity than our own Earth would be cooler and more prone to ice ages. Earth's obliquity does vary over time (it's one of the Milankovitch cycles), and many scientists think that periods of lower obliquity are causes of glaciation. So, I'm going to edit the main page to reflect this, yes it's a fantasy world but the existing info is wrong. Efnisien 13:33, 15 June 2007 (UTC)